The Many Benefits of Healthy Self-Esteem

The term “self-esteem” described a person’s long-term beliefs about their own value as a person. Many things can affect your self-esteem over time, including your body image, your internal monologue, and the way others treat you.

Self-esteem can be too low, too high, or just right. Because a person’s self-esteem tends to be stable over time, it can be difficult to move from one of these categories to another. However, if your self-esteem is unhealthy, the effort you put toward creating a positive self-image can pay off. As your self-esteem becomes healthy, you may see positive changes in your emotional well-being, relationships with others, and physical health.

Self-Esteem and Your Emotional Well-Being

Achieving and maintaining healthy self-esteem can be the foundation for your overall mental wellness. Whether you currently live with an emotional disorder or wish to prevent them, healthy self-esteem can help in many ways. Perhaps most noticeably, self-esteem gives people confidence. This confidence can help you get past obstacles that may have stopped your recovery in the past.

Healthy self-esteem also helps people let go of unhelpful thought patterns, including perfectionism and all-or-nothing thinking. When left unchecked, these thought patterns can cause damage to a person’s mental health. However, healthy self-esteem can give you the clarity you need in order to move past these ways of thinking. For example, you no longer need to do everything perfectly when you realize that your best is good enough.

Healthy self-esteem not only allows you to overcome your current mental health challenges, but it also sets you up for future success in this area. When you understand who you are and what you’re worth, you can adapt to life’s many challenges without falling back onto unhealthy patterns of thought and behavior.

Improve Your Relationships

Healthy self-esteem helps your mental well-being because it improves your relationship with yourself. Similarly, the confidence you gain with healthy self-esteem can improve your relationships with your family and friends. First of all, you can have the confidence you need to cut toxic relationships from your life. You can also learn to ask for what you need from others.

Healthy self-esteem also helps people build empathy for others and set realistic expectations. Without perfectionism, you can be more understanding when others mess up and realize it is not a reflection of their feelings for you. Finally, people with healthy self-esteem understand that disagreements happen between loved ones, and these disagreements do not mean that love is lost.

Physical Benefits of Healthy Self-Esteem

When you know your worth, you may feel more compelled to care for your physical health. For example, someone with low self-esteem may fall into an unhealthy eating pattern or even develop an eating disorder. They may believe that they need to seriously change their bodies in order to deserve love. However, people with healthy self-esteem understand that their worth is not tied to the food they eat or the size of clothes they wear.

Furthermore, people with healthy self-esteem are less likely to start smoking, deal with alcoholism, and have cardiovascular problems than those with low self-esteem. People with low self-esteem can turn to unhealthy substances to mask the pain of feeling worthless. They may also feel like they are not worthy of self-care, such as working out or developing other healthy habits. Maintaining healthy self-esteem can change all of that.

Changing your self-esteem can be a difficult process, but you don’t have to go through it alone. The counselors at LifeStance Health can help you understand your needs and give you the tools to improve your self-esteem. Contact us today.